Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 1: Wednesday, Arrival

So, the stars aligned and Erica and I were able to go to Japan for 11 days in early November. We were in Tokyo for 6 nights, then Kyoto for 2 nights, Hakone for 1 night, and back to Tokyo for 2 nights. We had a most excellent time, and thought that our friends would enjoy hearing about it.

Day 1: Wednesday, Nov 7
Arrival. Narita airport was easy to get through. Unfortunately, I couldn't really sleep on the plane, even drugged. Bust, at least the flight was not as bad as UAL to Australia in 2001. AA really does have more room in coach! :) For a 6 foot tall person, it makes a difference on a 10+ hour flight. Of course, Sydney is a bit farther than Tokyo (I think that was 12+ hours). I was disappointed that it was dark when we landed, as I couldn't tell what stuff was like outside. The train ride was pretty easy to Tokyo and the subway was fairly easy as well, even after having been awake for more than 24 hours. I was really surprised. More about the subway later.

The hotel (Intercontinental Tokyo Bay) seems more out of the way than we originally thought. It's got a convenient station, but switching to it's line is a PITA. The line that our hotel is on is run by a different company than the train from Tokyo station, and the lines are not always the easier to connect between. Shiodome station is nutty to navigate. However, the hotel is nice, but we got a smoking room :( and the beds are too firm. Staff is super helpful but they could only switch our room to a non-smoking one on the second day. BTW, don't eat at the restaurants here or in the "mall-let" nearby. Also, if you do go to Japan, in general, only eat Japanese food!

On the subway, fares are hard to keep track of, due to distance-basis fare calculations & multiple companies running services. Some of the stations are totally freaking huge and it takes more time to walk through them and find the exit than the train trip actually took. However, with a PASMO or SUICA card (similar to the Charlie card in Boston), things are pretty easy.

Here are some general thoughts.

Some of the things that amuse me:

• the high-pitched voices of women in recordings & TV (ads, subway, tv shows, etc)
• that people are paid to stand around and greet people in stores
• pocari sweat
• people don't know how to use a camera w/ a viewfinder (they keep asking why the screen doesn't work; it does, but my camera's just old!)
• everything talks to you in a woman's voice (escalators, elevators, stores)
• many things have their own jingle (such as the shinkansen train)
• how most of the city is not as crowded as one might think
• people sleep often and everywhere, especially on the subway.
  

Some things that amaze me:

• the food halls in the dept stores
• the awesomeness of the subway
• the safeness of the city
• how the old is so old, and the new is so new, at least compared to Boston

Some things that disappoint me:

• the amount of smoking:
• the way that the little old people push and shove everywhere
• most of the actual consumer technology that we saw was not as high-tech as I expected, nor as cheap
• most of the computers we saw were Sonys
• there wasn't as much variety of things, for the most part; I'll go into detail later

Here are our photos of Tokyo, and here are some photos of random food items.

Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 2: Thursday, Tokyo

First real day here. We woke up early and went to the fish market. Totally amazing place, although Erica said that it reminded her of an old English poem about "the rape of the sea"... Crazy place and almost got run over by tons of these little motorized carts; you'll see them in the photo gallery. Also, people smoke in the market. Gross. Ate the most awesome sushi at one of the tiny restaurants nearby. Turns out that it's the one that Todd English featured in his show. The staff was amused at Erica's Japanese speaking. In fact, that's a theme throughout the trip. She's pulling it off quite well, but they are clearly more used to foreigners like me who can barely speak their own native language... :) In any case, though fairly expensive, the sushi was most excellent, and the pieces of fish were HUGE in comparison to what one usually gets in the states.

We walked around Ginza; very interesting, although not a lot to do except people watch and shop. People ride their bikes on the sidewalk and don't wear helmets. Some people use bells, but not everyone, which made things a little dicey to walk around when it was crowded. There are vending machines everywhere: mostly drinks, some smokes, no food. Sadly though, most of the machines had the same sorts of stuff in them.

The Sony store was kinda interesting. No super duper tiny laptops except the UMPC tablet-y one. And that's too small for regular daily use... They did have a ton of cameras and TVs and all that. We didn't make it up to the Aibo floor though.

Walked around the Imperial Palace grounds. Beautiful architecture, but you can't go in the grounds- proper. Also, strangely not a Japanese stlye garden. None of the buildings are open to the public. Advise to skip. Across from the main gate though, there's a sweet park, which if it's a nice day, would be a lovely place to nap. There's also a "water park" nearby, which in this case means an open courtyard w/ cool fountains. They had even hired a dude to sweep out the bottoms of the fountains. Nifty!

Ate dinner at a crappy chinese place near the hotel. AMPM is our friend though and saved us. We love AMPM. Also, 'Dars' may be the cheapest, best dark chocolate out there. We love Dars.

I've noticed that things are packaged beautifully here, the more so the higher the pricepoint. If you but a $5 box of sweets from a shop (and it's a step up from a convenience store), the clerk will wrap it up neatly and quickly into a little gift for you. :)

Pooped out earlish due to poor sleeping and jet lag.


Here are photos from the fish market.

Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 3: Friday, Tokyo

Went to Shibuya and walked around. Visited the Toto Super World Toilet Museum, which was free and amazing and didn't take a lot of time. The really make a lot of interesting kitchen and bath products (cabinets, counters, sinks, faucets, etc) that are awesome and sadly only available in Japan. Plus, you can try out the Washlets when you're done touring the showroom.

Went to a department store, Odakyu, we think that had the most amazing selection of electronics. It was crazy as hell in there. Like, if you're familiar, an amped up, rosy-colored, hazy memory of Crazy Eddie's. It was loud, stuff were crammed everywhere, greeters were greeting often and enthusiastically. Saw some laptops that seem to be JP only, tiny and sweet. Prices didn't seem to be too different from home though.

I'll have to fill in the rest of this day after some more consultation with Erica.

Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 4: Tokyo

It rained today.

Went to Harajuku and walked around. This is sort of the "Harvard Square" of Tokyo. Lots of kids, lots of stores. Interestingly, lots of crepe stands. And the crepes are good!

Found 'Hatch', which is an eyeglasses store and each bought 2 pair of glasses for cheap! They include an eye exam, frames, lenses, and some accoutrements into the price. I think that each of my pairs was 12500¥, which is approx $125 (~$120). And, for most prescriptions, they'll have them ready in about 20 minutes. Suck it Lenscrafters. Lots of great styles. This was "Hatch 8" and there are a number of them around the city. The guy that helped us (Ba Ba) had a great eye for frames (he picked mine out) and was hilarious!

Nearby is the Meiji Shrine, with lots of people dressed up formally. Erica thinks it's the 3-5-7 festival. The photo above is of the largest Toyo gate in the world. It's huge! The shrine is beautiful. We walked around quite a lot that day.

Some thoughts on communicating in Japan from Erica: You can and should learn some Japanese. You don't need to learn a ton, but getting the basics down can be really helpful. Pimsleur is good, especially if you are an auditory learner. It's surprising that Japanese people generally don't speak that much English, due to the fact that English is everywhere. It's in subway announcements, written on signs and products, etc. Of course, those aspects are not really conversational; perhaps that it.

Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 5: Tokyo

Tried to go to a hotel for breakfast, but the hotel was gone, so went to the New Otani Hotel and had traditional Japanese breakfast. Very tasty. Love that. Doesn't tide me over too long, but I love it. BTW, the hotel is very confusing to walk around; it's laid out strangely. It also has some love, although compact Japanese style gardens.

Rained during breakfast but the rest of the day was pleasant. On the whole, the weather has been great: nice and cool. However, interior temperatures have been too high. I sweat everywhere and the Japanese seem cool & dry. Especially the subway, no matter which company runs it, are all sweatlodges. I feel like a stripper whenever I ride the train. I think that one reason why people are so sleepy on the train is that it's so warm in there.

Tried to visit the detached palace, but it must have been too detached, as we never made it inside the grounds. Still, we had a good walk.

We checked out of the Intercontinental and checked into the Chisun Grand Akasaka Business Hotel. Erica had thought that it was in Asakusa (which is where the Rooster and Rake festival we went to later in the trip was), but luckily we figured it out prior to going all the way there! In any case, the second hotel was in a much more convenient part of the city. It was a great hotel in many respects. The staff was solid, the beds were more comfortable than the Intercontinental, and the property was appealing and well kept up. We chose to move hotels to get a flavor for a different part of the city, as well as try out the newest business hotel in Tokyo, and save a little money. The room was TINY, so so small, barely bigger than the bed. But, free internet! So, we were able to watch TV recorded at home (w/ my SageTV DVR) via Orb. I love technology.

Amusingly, in the elevator going up to our room at some point, after a brief conversation with Erica, an older woman that was in the elevator with us looked at me and said something like "she's very charming"! Japanese people seem to love Erica. Well, who doesn't?

By the way, some thoughts on travel books & guides:

• Time Out Tokyo was very helpful; highly recommended! It doesn't list everything, and it's not perfect, but it's the best book that we looked at prior to our trip.
  
• Streetwise Tokyo, a laminated foldout map, was also great. It's very compact and has detail areas for most of the neighborhoods that you might want to visit. Plus, unlike most tourist maps that you might get for free, it has a scale and all areas on the same map are drawn to the same scale.
  
• The Little Tokyo Subway Guidebook was good, as far as it went, but since the Tokyo subway system is actually composed of lines run by several different companies, it didn't seem to include all of them, and so was incomplete.
• Fodors Japan was not really all that useful.
• It's difficult to get good online maps of Japan / Tokyo, as Google Maps, etc have all their labels in Japanese.
• Due to the way that street addresses were formulated in Tokyo, they are nigh unfindable. Use the Diddlefinger to more easily find Tokyo addresses on a map.
  

Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 6: Tokyo / Kyoto

Tokyo station is HUGE! It was crazy to walk through and find our train. The train (high-speed bullet train = shinkansen) arrived & left very promptly w/ perhaps only 5 min of station time. Ride was easy and fast. We went something like 200mph. Very smooth and relatively quiet. Makes Amtrak look like crap!

The Westin Miyako was a great choice. Comfy rooms & beds(the best beds in Japan!); excellent staff. Turns out, also great coffee. Pretty good location: walkable to most things.

We tried to use the subway, but a combination of not enough being in English & the things we wanted to go to not being too far apart changed our minds. Supposedly the bus is very tourist friendly, but we didn't try it. Kyoto is actually pretty walkable. It has quite a different vibe than Tokyo. Tokyo is huge and neon, while Kyoto is not so much. There are temples and shrines of varying sizes on just about every block.

It was raining in the evening when we went out for dinner. Walked around downtown for a bit, including the Gion neighborhood, which is traditional (& actually current) geisha territory. It has a very calm, pretty, historic feel to it. See the photo above. Very old-seeming (and probably old in truth). There are also many unmarked "rich old dude" clubs and peeking inside the doorways was very interesting. Beautiful anterooms & courtyards.

Saw a show at the Gion Corner Theater on traditional Japanese arts. I would recommend against it, unless you know only very little about such things or are easily amused. The performers all seemed uninterested in what they were doing. For the first performance, they had a Japanese Tea Ceremony (which was off to the side at audience level and so could not be seen by many people) going on concurrently w/ Japanese Harp playing (which was cool) and flower arranging (which was boring). The "geishas" were actually "maikos" (their apprentices) and were not graceful in the least. Plus, one had a freakishly large head and dead fish eyes. The "Japanese orchestra" was interesting, in that the conductor wears a costume and dances around. The comic play and the puppet play were somewhat interesting, but mystifying. There was no commentary given during any of the activities to explain the significance of any particular action.



Before the show, we ate some street snacks (savory and sweet rice balls) and stopped by for one of those JP omelet things at this cheesy little place. The waitress brings by the menu, which is basically just a photo of the omlet and asks what you want. That's all they serve, BTW, so it's pretty amusing. It was great until some ass started chain smoking nearby.

Erica & Todd go to Japan: Day 7: Kyoto

Walked down the Philosopher's Walk along a canal. Visited a whole bunch of temples. Erica may be able to enumerate if you care to know which. Quite peaceful and restful and all that.

At the "end" of the Walk, leading up to the big Temple, the road is lined with shops, many of which sell Wagashi, which are a style of traditional Japanese confection, perfected in Kyoto. Erica made friends with the two young women working in one of the shops. They said that she was very "cute"! :) We think that she gets reactions like this due to her speaking Japanese. They gave us lots of samples (great business tactic!) and we ended up buying a box of black sesame and white sesame treats, which, by the way, were delicious!

Had a good udon lunch (until some ass started chain smoking nearby) then vanilla-green tea soft serve twist for dessert. We walked probably 8 miles today and my feet are sore!

For dinner walked down to a supposed food maket area, which was sadly closed. So we got some mediocre (and not too pricey) sushi after walking around a bit. Found a 100 yen store and picked up a sweet camera case and a few other small thing. Then walked back to the hotel.

I get templed out pretty easily. They were all very beautiful.

Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 8: Kyoto / Hakone

The alarm didn't get set, so we slept in a bit, which worked out nicely. Had another buffet breakfast and walked around the hotel's gardens a bit, which were lovely. There are some photos posted.

Took the shuttle bus to the train station, shopped for shoes for Erica (no results though), got some snacks and got on the shinkansen. Was in Odawara in about 2 hours. From Odawara, hopped a bus to Miyanoshita, where the ryoken (traditional Japanese inn) was. Took the cable car down. It's located at the bottom of a valley along a river. It's all pretty Japanese olde-skool and stuff. Staff was great; enthusiastic, with just enough English for us to mostly get by. Erica continues to whup ass w/ her linguistic skills, which is great.

Took a public (segregated) bath before dinner. Was familar w/ Japanese bathing protocols due to stays at the Miyako Hotel in SF, which has traditional Japanese baths (w/ instructions!).

There are lots of different types of footwear and a lot of rules surrounding when each can be worn. It's quite amusing.

Each room is assigned a maid for the duration of your stay. More like a butler kind of thing than the "clean up all your stuff" type of thing. She kept laughing, not sure if it was at us or what. She also seemed to think that Erica was cute. Had an awesome (seemingly never-ending) trad Japanese dinner. There were some suspicious pickles that Erica had to spit, but other than that, it was great. Also, we chose the "fresh" sake over the hot sake. It was tasty and I was a bit toasty. Dinner took an hour and a half, with many introductions of new dishes. For each dish, the maid would place my portion in front of me and tell me what it was, then place Erica's in front of her and tell her what it was, even though it was the same thing.

Reserved a co-ed private "family time" outdoors bath. We were led out of the building across the river to a private bathing pavilion w/ 2 pools. One "very" hot up high and the other just "hot" lower by the river. It was awesome.

Here's the link to our photos of Hakone.

Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 9: Hakone / Tokyo

Slept like crap due to futon mattresses on the floor. But, had a pretty good Japanese breakfast at the ryoken. Took much less time than dinner. Had an outdoors bath (segregated) prior to checkout. The awesome guy at the top of the cable car gave us a ride to the train station, which was super nice. Overall extremely happy w/ the ryoken. Although, it turns out that Erica found the service too intrusive.

Visited the Hakone Open Air Sculpture Museum. There were some pretty interesting sculptures there. Worth the visit, but expensive.

Decided to go to Gora and catch the cable car up the mountain. Lots of standing and waiting. Transportation is not as well organized, especially for non-Japanese speakers as even Kyoto is. I guess that's due to the much smaller non-speaking population that visits than the other places. Saw Mt Fuji from the cable car, which was great. Also the great stinking sulfur pits or somesuch. Looked like Mordor! We decided not to make the whole trip around the lake and so headed back down the rope way and cable car. It was tougher to get back to Tokyo due to discrepancies between the tourist map and reality. Buses were supposed to go places they didn't as were trains. So, it took a bit longer than we would have liked, but make it we did. Checked back into the Intercontinental for our last two nights

Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 10: Tokyo

The beds at the Intercontinental are more comfy than at the ryoken, but that's not saying much. Erica got this place really cheap on priceline, so it's ok.

Went to Akasuka and visited some shrines. Ate some great street snacks.

In the afternoon, went to Akihabara to see if we could find an awesomely small computer for Erica, but no luck. Most stores only seemed to sell Sony. And, it turns out that prices were better in Shinjuku by around 1000 yen. So, while it was interesting to walk around a bit, Akihabara was a bust. There were a few neat stores, like one that sold all types of cables and would cut custom lengths of whatever you want. Went back to the hotel to chill, then went to Ropppngi Hills area for dinner. Ate at a great soba / udon place. Walked through the Hyatt there, which was amazing. While it's only a 4 star or something, it makes the intercontinental look like a dump. Of course, in some respects, the Chisun Grand did as well.

Erica & Todd go to Japan! Day 11: Tokyo

Slept late, went to Shimbashi / Shiodome area to check out ADMT Advertising Museum. Free and pretty cool. I recommend it. Walked around a bit and ate at a kontatsu restaurant in Shiodome. It seems that most malls in Tokyo are designed to confuse people, rather than make it clear to get around and find stuff.

After that, got our stuff from the lockers in Shimbashi station and headed to the airport.

All of the (or at least, the major ones) subway stations have coin lockers. The trick is to find one that's large enough and hope that they all aren't taken.